Part 6 (1/2)

”But why under heaven,” he said, ”should a foreign diplomat be mixed up in a camp of Slavic laborers?”

”There are strange things in diplomacy,” said Father Murray. ”And stranger things in Siha.s.set when the town constable has so much interest in your taking of tea at Killimaga. If you had turned around a moment ago, you would have seen our constable's coattails disappearing behind the bushes on our right.”

CHAPTER V

WITH EMPTY HANDS

In the long after years Mark Griffin used to wonder at the strange way in which love for Ruth Atheson entered his life. Mark always owned that, somehow, this love seemed sent for his salvation. It filled his life, but only as the air fills a vacuum; so it was, consequently, nothing that prevented other interests from living with it. It aroused him to greater ambition. The long-neglected creative power moved without Mark's knowing why. His pen wrote down his thoughts, and he no longer destroyed what he committed to paper. It now seemed a crime to destroy what had cost him only a pleasure to produce. The world had suddenly become beautiful. No longer did j.a.pan and Siberia call to him. He had no new plans, but he knew that they were forming, slowly, but with finality and authority.

Yet Mark's love was never spoken. It was just understood. Many times he had determined to speak, and just as many times did it seem quite unnecessary. He felt that Ruth understood, for one day, when an avowal trembled on his lips, she had broken it off unspoken by gently calling him ”Mark,” her face suffused the while with an oddly tender light that was in itself an answer. After that it was always ”Ruth” and ”Mark.”

Father Murray also seemed to understand; with him, too, it was ”Ruth”

and ”Mark.” After one week of that glorious September, Mark was at Killimaga daily; and when October came and had almost pa.s.sed, without a word of affection being spoken between them, Ruth and Mark came to know that some day it would be spoken, quite as naturally as she had uttered his Christian name for the first time. When Mark thought of his love, he thought also of his mother. He seemed to see her smile as if it quite pleased her; and he rejoiced that he could believe she knew, and saw that it was good.

”I love many things in men,” said Father Murray one day as he and Mark watched the waves das.h.i.+ng against the bluff. ”I love generosity and strength, truthfulness and mercy; but, most of all, I love cleanness.

The world is losing it, and the world will die from the loss. The chief aid to my faith is the clean hearts I see in my poor.”

”Uncle Mac again?” ventured Mark.

”Uncle Mac, and Uncles Mac--many of them. They have a heritage of cleanness. It is the best thing they brought to this new world, and _we_ were the losers when they left us.”

”_We_? But you are English, are you not?” asked Mark courteously.

”Ah! So you caught me then, did you? Yes, I am English, or rather British. But don't question me about that; I am real Yankee now. Even my tongue has lost its ancestral rights.”

Mark was persistent. ”Perhaps you, too, have a little of the 'blessed drop' that makes the Uncle Macs what they are? I really think, Father, that you have it.”

”Not even a little of the 'blessed drop.' I am really not English, though born in England. Both father and mother were Scotch. So I am kin to the 'blessed drop.'”

”And you drifted here--”

”Not exactly 'drifted,' Mark. I came because I wanted to come. I came for opportunity. I was ambitious, and then there was another reason--but that is at present forbidden ground. Here is your constable friend again.”

The constable pa.s.sed with a respectful touch of his helmet. _He_ at least was of the soil. Every line of his face spoke of New England.

”He is a character worth studying,” remarked Father Murray. ”Have you ever talked with him?”

”No. I have had no chance.”

”Then find one, and put him in a book. He was once rich for Siha.s.set.

That was in the lumber days. But he lost his money, and he thinks that the town owes him a living. That is the Methodist minister to whom he is speaking now. He, too, is worth your attention.”

”Do you get along well with the Protestant clergy of the town?” asked Mark.

”Splendidly,” said Father Murray; ”especially with the Universalist.

There is a lot of humor in the Universalist. I suspect the 'blessed drop' in him. One day I happened to call him a Unitarian, and he corrected me. 'But what,' I asked, 'is the difference between the Universalists and the Unitarians?' The little man smiled and said: 'One of my professors put it like this: ”The Unitarians believe that G.o.d is too good to d.a.m.n them, and the Universalists believe they are too good to be d.a.m.ned.”'”

”Still, it cannot be an easy life,” said Mark, ”to be one of seven or eight Protestant pastors in such a small town.”

”It certainly is hard sledding,” replied Father Murray. ”But these men take it very philosophically and with a great deal of self-effacement.